Japan grounds military training aircraft after crash leaves 2 crew members missing

TOKYO (AP) — Japan grounded most of its aging military training aircraft on Wednesday after one of the planes crashed minutes after take off.

Two crew are missing after the T-4 training aircraft operated by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force crashed after taking off from Komaki Air Base, in the central Japanese prefecture of Aichi, officials said.

The force said the plane was lost from radar two minutes after departure. The authorities are searching for the missing aircraft and its crew in an area near a reservoir known as the Iruka pond, officials said. The reservoir, in the city of Inuyama, is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northeast of the air base.

The military has grounded temporarily nearly 200 T-4s until the cause of the accident is identified and safety checks and training are carried out, Hiroaki Uchikura, the air force chief of staff, told a news conference late Wednesday.

The crashed plane was a 36-year-old T-4 operated out of Nyutabaru Air Base, in the southern prefecture of Miyazaki. It was not fitted with a voice recorder or a flight data recorder.

Defense Minister Gen Nakatani earlier Wednesday told reporters that parts of the aircraft have been found at the crash site. Officials were also preparing to collect fuel apparently leaked from the aircraft and floating in the reservoir, Nakatani said.

Lifesaving equipment and helmets of the crew were also found, Uchikura said.

Witnesses told the NHK national broadcaster that they heard a loud noise like thunder, followed by sirens of police cars and fire engines.

The T-4 was returning to Nyutabaru air base after its crew had earlier helped deliver a F-15 fighter jet to Komaki Air Base for scheduled maintenance, Uchikura said.

A captain with more than 1,000 hours of flight experience had piloted the F-15, while a first lieutenant piloted the T-4. Both were in the T-4 on their way back to Komaki when the incident happened.

The crash is the latest in a series of defense aircraft accidents in recent years.

In April 2024, two SH-60K navy reconnaissance helicopters crashed during nighttime anti-submarine training near Torishima island, about 600 kilometers south of Tokyo, leaving all eight crewmembers dead.

In 2023, an army UH-60JA Black Hawk helicopter on a reconnaissance mission crashed off a southern island of Miyako, with the loss of 10 crew.